This Is The Night
by walkingaftermidnight
Summary: The night provides an escape for Bella, but it also brings uncertainty. It's a good thing she isn't afraid of the dark. Oneshot written for the JacobxBella Big Bang and broken down into two parts. Sequel to my other long oneshot: Breakdown.
1. Part One

**AN:** This story was written for the Jacob and Bella Big Bang, and will be posted in two parts. It is a sequel of sorts to my previous fic "Breakdown". It is not necessary that you read "Breakdown" before reading this story, but it would certainly help to provide some background info, and to help explain Jacob's attitude towards Bella a little later on in the story. If you get a chance, please go to livejournal and check out the community bellaxjacob_bb. There you can find a link to some banners, wallpapers, icons and even a soundtrack for this story, all created by my fantastic art-buddy blueandblack (bluesuzanne). That's what the Big Bang is all about: collaboration between authors and artists... so go take a look! There are plenty of other stories by several talented J/B authors there!

Enjoy the story, and stay tuned for part 2, which will be posted in the next few days.

* * *

**__****THIS IS THE NIGHT**

* * *

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."

Jack Kerouac, _On The Road_

* * *

_**It breaks my heart to know that you'll actually read these words tomorrow. You certainly don't deserve to be dealt such an unexpected blow, but you do deserve a proper explanation, so I hope that this letter can at least provide more clarity than my aimless ramblings ever could. I'm going to leave it in a place where I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding it, and I hope that you'll read it all the way through, even if it seems too painful at times**_

_**I have to start by asking you to forgive me for writing a letter just because I couldn't find my voice. I won't blame you if you want to call me a coward, if you think I deserve to be punished instead of forgiven. I'll still be repeating it inside my head, hoping you can somehow hear me:**_

_**I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry it had to happen this way.**_

* * *

As a child, she'd never been afraid of the dark.

It had been her only weird thing, really… the only thing that set her apart from ninety percent of the other kids in her neighbourhood or at her school. Children weren't supposed to _enjoy_ wandering into closets at midnight, pushing aside the shoes and falling asleep behind thick curtains of musty tweed and gore-tex. Children loved the _sunshine_, and closets contained monsters, and night-lights were made for a _reason_. This was all according to her mother, who, after so many months of failing to drag a suitable answer out of her little girl, decided to (of course) find a therapist off whom she could bounce a barrage of ridiculous questions: Is this healthy? Is it… you know… detrimental to her posture if she sleeps on the floor under her bed? Is she going to grow up to be one of those people who can't go outside or be in public? Is it possible to suffocate inside a dryer?

And the answers followed like equally spaced speed bumps on a long, level, otherwise empty road: Yes. No. Probably not. Only if the door is shut (and, pre-emptively, with raised hands: You can't from the inside).

After one thoroughly enlightening hour it was determined that okay, sure it _was_ a little odd.

It was odd that Bella didn't just endure the darkness with a determined bravery that most kids her age exhibited. She actually _liked_ it, sought it out, found solace in it, and this was an "unconventional behaviour" according to… science.

Still, there wasn't much to be done. Renee proceeded to painfully (and somewhat guiltily) part ways with her hundred and fifty dollar check, and Bella continued to wake up cramped between the clothes-hamper and the closet-organizer until her limbs eventually became too long to keep folded up all night without succumbing to pins and needles.

Yet, even after her _hide and seek phase_, as it came to be known, had passed, the strange behaviour would continue to reveal itself from time to time. In middle school she rolled her eyes at her friends and their fascination with ghost stories and Ouija boards and _Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary_, their squeals of terror always punctuated by her poorly-held-back grunts of inappropriate laughter. They would, in turn, try their hardest to get a rise out of her, jumping out from behind the furniture, forcing her to sit through horror movie upon horror movie, solemnly warning her about things that supposedly thrived in the darkness: ghosts and monsters in all their various forms. But she couldn't even force herself to convincingly bat an eyelash. It was all just so silly; she _knew_ the dark, had seen every last corner of it, and it seemed to her that she was the _only_ thing that thrived there. If all of it were true, if there really _was_ a legitimate reason to be afraid, she'd have discovered it a long time ago.

It couldn't possibly make any more sense than that.

And yet it was this same logic – on _this_ night, now that she needed it the most – that was betraying her.

It was two am. She was seated in an almost-crouch on a low concrete ledge (or rather, the _appropriate_ concrete ledge) beneath the sputtering fluorescent Tesoro marquee, somewhat concealed from plain sight by the long shadow of a soda vending machine. It was humming a low buzz against her left shoulder, yet failing to calm her even with its gentle vibration. Her toothbrush, wallet, passport, and change of underwear casually ricocheted off the inside walls of her otherwise empty bag, shuffling around haphazardly with the alternating bounce of her restless legs.

This was _it_, the night that everything was about to change, and she couldn't even write off her skittishness as the simple product of an underlying childish fear.

She lifted her head, ignoring the dark, knowing that it wasn't what was bothering her, and tried even harder to ignore what really _was_ bothering her. But it was pointless; there were so many other things, two-sided things, arguments and passions and voices of reason that warred within the confines of her far-past-the-point-of-exhausted mind, and at this moment they were tearing her in two. Still.

_So much for conquering your indecisiveness_, she thought to herself, shaking her head. _Of course. Leave it to Bella Swan to question her decisions even after she's supposedly made them._

She was officially the most pathetic human being on this curb.

The muffled sound of smashing glass and distant drunken laughter brusquely roused her from her trance. She craned her neck forward, angling her head awkwardly around the soda machine to see if she could locate the noise's source, but all she could see was the dark, empty street intermittently lit up with soft, tented beams of yellow light.

The clamour seemed pretty far off, and she was almost a hundred percent certain that it was simply the product of some forestry workers on a weekend high and one too many shots of Jack Daniels, but it still served to needlessly exacerbate her already anxious state of mind. She automatically drew her feet up until her thighs were pressed firmly against her chest, rested her chin on her kneecaps, and continued to wait.

After what seemed like another hour, but was actually only fifteen minutes, she glanced down at her cell phone, feeling around blindly for the appropriate button and jabbing it with her thumb to make the display illuminate, casting a subtle glow of blue-white light on her forearms and drawn-up knees.

Sure enough… Quarter after.

She shivered, setting off an unsolicited chain reaction that quickly became impossible to reign in.

Her teeth began chattering, a gradual progression from rapid, feather-light drumroll taps to a deep, hollow, jaw-tensing staccato. Eventually, the rest of her body joined in on her knees' convulsing, the muscles in her neck constricting and pulling on her shoulders until they found themselves hoisted somewhere up around her ears.

She wondered if it was just the residual chill, her body's subtle way of nudging her back to her bedroom, of keeping Edward firmly situated in her consciousness despite every attempt she was making (and had been making for the past hour) to block him out.

She closed her eyes and tried to centre herself by focusing on the almost deafening rhythm inside her chest, but even her _heart_ seemed to be taunting her, prodding her repetitively like a mischievously persistent child: _You're bluffing... You're bluffing... You're bluffing... You're bluffing… You're—_

"You're right," she suddenly whispered aloud to no one, the soft sound escaping her throat with the abrupt snapping-up of her head. Her lips felt numb, and they barely moved at all as she breathed out the rhetorical question, "What the hell are you doing?"

She shoved her phone quickly back into her bag, stood with a slight wobble, and began to march resolutely back down the road that had brought her here in the first place.

She didn't get far before she was blinded, though only for as second, by a set of high-beams that should've been toned down to a level more appropriate for residential driving – but weren't. She brought a hand up to shield her eyes. The light continued to move, sweeping past her and the gas pumps until it finally came to rest on a scraggly, abused-looking shrub. The car shifted into park not twenty feet from where she stood.

He was here.

What horrible timing… or was it perfect timing? She didn't have a clue, and she was suddenly terrified.

Time to decide.

As she slowly lowered her arm from its defensive position, a tiny flash – like a spark from a fire – caught her attention, causing her eyes to lock magnetically onto her slowly lowering hand. She held it out at waist level in front of her squinted eyes, its digits delicately arched, hovering motionless over a spray of broken bottle shards that picked up and refracted the glowing red beam from the taxi's taillights. The diamond on her finger was not unlike these simple chunks of glass, no more or less impressive to her than the destruction at her feet. It sparkled exactly the same.

And so she found it easier to finally exhale the gasp she'd been holding in since the cab's arrival.

She found it easier to take her very first step forward.

* * *

_**These days it feels like my words (and my strength, and my composure, and my ability to string thoughts together coherently) just completely disappear when I'm around you. I open my mouth and there's only a void, so I try to forget about it. I keep putting it off til "later", and then I can't help getting angrier and angrier with myself as each uneventful day passes. I don't know if you really understand what it's like to be angry all the time without letting it show, to feel trapped and silenced by the fear of hurting everyone around you. Well, I can tell you: It's absolutely exhausting.**_

* * *

The sun's reflection off the windshield of the Rabbit was dancing, tracing a lingering ultraviolet squiggly line around her entire field of vision, searing into her retinas. Despite the burn, she could still make him out in her rear-view mirror, his bare shoulders slumped in defeat, tired legs slowly dragging him back towards the little car. Sure, he was getting progressively smaller and smaller, but he was still there. She could still breathe.

A deep pothole suddenly shook the world around her, causing the tiny luminescent speck to dart up and out of her field of vision for a second, but she found it – found _him_ – again easily enough with the levelling-out of the road.

It seemed physically impossible for her to release him from her sight, especially after looking into his eyes not two minutes ago and being forced to acknowledge the hurt that she had caused. Because she _was_ causing him pain, and that should've been reason enough to take a step back and consider leaving him for _his_ sake, but she just… _couldn't_, and she wasn't eager to consider the reason behind this unfounded determination.

So it was with extreme reluctance that she glanced at the road ahead for a millisecond – just to make sure that her name wasn't about to end up on tomorrow's front page along with the words "headlong", "tragic", and "toxicology report pending"– before quickly relocating the mirror.

She panicked for a moment; he'd disappeared… sort of. The little red car was still sitting motionless on the shoulder, and she was sure she could see the vague outline of a dark figure inside. This arrangement was sort of perfect in a way, because his face – the one part of him that she really didn't _need_ to see right now – was completely unreadable behind its reflective glass shield.

This feeling of grounded calm, however, wasn't to last long. The highway began to gradually bend enough to warrant her full attention on the dotted yellow line that separated her from potential disaster, and this time when she looked back she could only see the trees lining the pavement, menacing in their solidarity like so many vague, shadowy sentinels of the road.

She almost immediately collapsed into tears. Almost. It was as if her sanity was attached to him, and the tether had finally reached its snapping point. Her breath hovered somewhere between her throat and her lungs, unable to either advance or retreat.

His words from a few moments ago gathered and built and rearranged themselves until it began to feel like they were assaulting her memory, intensifying by the second. They swept through her mind like a rake passing through smooth, levelled sand, unsettling all other lingering thoughts as they passed…

_Look… into your future... Do you honestly see this working? You, me, and him? _

It suddenly struck her harder than the head-on semi she'd been dreading a moment ago…

_Oh God… what if his answer is no? _

What if she'd actually made a decision without having said a thing?

She looked back again, then straight ahead – only now without sight. Her vision was swimming, blank, smudged; it was miles and miles and miles of farther and farther away. And it wasn't just the road that was gone now, but _everything_… all of the things that had once anchored her. She couldn't decide if she was supposed to feel thrilled or terrified. She couldn't decide if she was free, or completely paralysed.

Then the promise – her promise – gripped and steadied her and tore her out of the imaginary wreckage, away from the screaming in her head that she hadn't even noticed until it was gone.

_I'll see you tomorrow._

She felt the ghost of his hand gently, timidly squeezing her arm, his knuckles warm under her own steady palm, and everything rushed back.

She drew in a desperate breath, and her future reappeared along with the road, straight and unclouded and beckoning. Her right foot pressed harder against the gas pedal, propelling her forward – eastward – with greater and greater speed, and she grasped at the promise like a lifeline as she left him in her dust.

* * *

_**Even as I sit here in the dark with my bag packed and my shoes on, I'm second-guessing every single thought that passes through my mind. I wonder if I'm just being horribly, greedily selfish? My mother used to tell me that life was about give and take, that I would have to relinquish certain things – important things – in order to make someone else happy one day. I know she was talking about compromise, but at what point is it considered prudent to step back and see if the benefits outweigh the losses? It seems to me that the moment of truth comes in finding the line that separates compromise from self-sacrifice, and then asking yourself:**_

**What side do I really want to be on?**

* * *

Tomorrow:

Jacob wasn't home. Something about "pack business," Billy told her, his eyes detached, cool, unable to linger on her face. Instead they hovered rather unapologetically just over her shoulder, apparently fascinated by the sky, or at least one of its inhabitants.

"When will he be back?" she asked innocently. "It's just that… he told me yesterday to come by today, so…"

"Late..." Billy said, his voice firm and abrupt like the chopping of a knife, eyes finally moving to meet hers. "I think he said he'd be back later…" He stopped for a second to check his watch unnecessarily, then waved his hand with casual disregard. "I mean _late_, later."

"Oh… okay." She stepped back, nodding her head gently as she lowered herself down the porch steps. "Will you tell him I'll--" but when she glanced back, her unspoken pledge to return was met only by the dull click of the door against its frame.

She _did_ come back the next day, though, this time to be greeted with an indifferent "He's out again".

Then the next day – Thursday – it was, "Out. Sam's orders", and then on Friday, "You know how it is, Bella…"

Four days passed without a single breath of news from – or about – Jake, and she retreated reluctantly each time, back to Edward and the comfort only he could provide, though he did so unwittingly. She knew that she should've been relieved, that she should've been _grateful_ to Jake for taking away her options… because while this decision that he'd clearly made on her behalf left behind an ache that wasn't easy to ignore, it also made things extremely simple. It renewed her focus.

For four days she pleaded with Edward, the same demand, but now with unparalleled intensity. _Please. I'm ready. I want to be with you forever…_

And Edward (

of course) being Edward, took this the wrong way. He took it in its _human_ context, where forever was merely synonymous with a lifetime. This was why she secretly wanted to berate him when he pulled out the ring: Even at this, what should've been their most romantic moment, they couldn't see eye to eye… and it wasn't just because she was literally standing up while he was literally kneeling down.

She wanted to frantically nudge his leg with her foot, to whip her head around and scan the room, hoping to find no witnesses. She wanted to yank on his arm and hiss at him to get up and stop being so ridiculous.

But instead she just let the solitary word fall out of her, hoarse and affected and nothing at all like it sounded in the movies when those girls - the ones with tears in their eyes - smiled and laughed and actually _meant_ it. She wasn't even sure which word she actually _said_ until she noticed him standing in front of her, until she saw the triumphant, relieved look on his face.

Edward Cullen slid Elizabeth Masen's diamond onto Bella's trembling finger, and in that moment her future – everything that she would ever have, or be, or want, or do, or love – became so unbelievably clear that it disappeared right in front of her eyes.

* * *

_**You'd think, since I'm writing this (and I guess that means I'm serious), that I'd have some sort of plan laid out… that I'd know where this path that I've chosen will lead me, but I don't. All I know is what I feel, and explaining these feelings is nearly impossible, especially when all of this seems completely stupid and irrational. How can I explain insanity? How can I justify running away, leaving behind all these things that are supposed to define me? It's scary, the idea of starting from scratch, of turning my back on this secure, stable life we have together, but you know I've never once asked for security. I've never envied those who claim to know what the future holds.**_

* * *

"Alice is going to absolutely lose her mind… you _do_ realize this, right?" he half-murmured, half-whispered into her ear. She shuddered, filling her darkened room with the sound of rustling sheets.

She was aware that he was trying to be funny, but she couldn't bring herself to laugh. Instead she attempted a light-hearted smile, achieved only a grimace. She was glad he was behind her, and therefore couldn't actually see her face. "Alice is… _Alice_. Shouldn't she already know?" she reasoned, trying again to force a giggle, and failing.

He hummed a low note against the back of her neck, so full of happiness that she could almost picture legions of jealous girls country-wide turning up their noses in disgust. "She knows that I'd planned on asking you, but… well, she wouldn't be able to see your answer."

"Not until my decision was actually made," she clarified, mumbling robotically into her pillow, still hoping that he couldn't detect any bitterness in her words.

"Exactly. Well, too bad for Miss Clairvoyant that she opted to go with Jasper and Emmett. She's going to be livid that she missed _this_ just to go hunting."

"But now that I've…" she stopped for a second, considering her words. "Now that I've… decided… will Alice be able to see? Does she always know my choices right when I've made them?"

He let out two or three low chuckles and drummed his fingers lightly against her ribcage. "Bella, to be honest I've tried to understand how Alice's head works since the moment I first met her… and to this day I'm still not sure if I _really_ get it."

"Hmmm…" she answered with a sort-of guttural purr, deciding to just leave it at that.

Staring straight ahead at her bookshelf, she tried to shake the feeling that she was suffocating beneath the arm draped over her side, which was feeling heavier and heavier by the second. She tried to divert her panicky thoughts by focusing on the subject of their prior conversation: Alice's gift… and Edward's too for that matter. How strange it must be, she thought, knowing what the future holds, knowing what everyone around you is thinking every second of every day? She'd never really reflected on it too deeply, never put herself in their shoes before. She hadn't considered how… well… _boring_ their lives might be as a result of these seemingly valuable assets.

Bella wondered if, after her transformation, she would come to possess some similar gift. She considered her current skills and, as a result, felt the laughter that she'd been searching for a moment ago almost rise to the surface. What sort of terrifying vampire power could she possibly possess? Speed-reading? Useless-lasagna making? Basketball dodging? Scrabble domination?

This newfound scepticism, this second-guessing of every last one of her yesterday-self's most beloved aspirations probably should have caught her off guard, but strangely… it didn't. Instead she was starting to see that something impulsive, something rebellious was growing inside of her. She could tell it had always been there, almost like a hereditary gene that had been dormant all these years, waiting to be discovered and utilized.

Bella almost jumped when Edward tilted his mouth back towards her ear and spoke in a tone that was about as close to giddy as he could possibly get. "This is the happiest day of my torturously long life." The announcement faded out into amused laughter, proving that he was at least capable of acknowledging his own ludicrous hyperbole.

But again, she couldn't laugh with him; instead she released another slightly muted "hmmm", hoped it came out _sounding_ more agreeable than it felt.

He lowered his voice to a whisper, pressed his lips against the skin at the ridge of her jawbone, and spoke again, this time with the utmost sincerity, "Do you know how long I've waited for you?" His cool breath grazed past her earlobe. "How long I've waited for _this_?"

She turned onto her back, allowing him to see her face but keeping her eyes trained on the ceiling. "So why can't we both wait just a little longer?" she said, trying not to sound too whiny. "Why do we _have_ to get married before I…" But she couldn't finish the sentence, the remaining syllables having already been swallowed.

"Bella…" He sat up, placing his cool hand on her arm, awakening thousands upon thousands of goosebumps. "Why does it matter so much to you?"

"Because…"

It was all she could come up with.

"What's the difference?" he proceeded convincingly, "This… what we feel for each other now… it's not going to change after I transform you. Whether we get married today, or next month, or six years from now, it's still just you and me. I just want to hear you promise yourself to me while you still have a _choice_. It's _important_ to me, Bella…"

She wanted to roll her eyes and tell him the same thing that she'd repeatedly told Jacob in so many different words: _Oh, please Edward. You know I don't have a choice. I need to be with you. There is no other option…_

Yes, she wanted to roll her eyes and laugh it off, but instead she settled on almost choking on her own saliva.

The Cullens, she realized, _really_ didn't have any options. They were stuck – in their bodies… away from the sun… in high school… with each other…

That was when she realized that all of this – her presence in their home, her showdown against James, her brush with the Volturi – must have seemed like a breath of fresh air to them. No wonder they loved her so much… she and her silly human fragility had managed to somehow bump their monotonous little world right out of its orbit. She had given them something to _do_.

_Is this what it will be like for me too?_ she wondered, _Am I just gonna hunt bears and drive sports cars and take the same trigonometry class over and over and over again until maybe, if the fates should smile upon me, some stupid human wanders into my life and stirs it up by trying to get themselves killed? Is this what I have to look forward to? _

She felt a light sheen of sweat starting to build on her forehead.

"Edward?" she mumbled.

"Yes, Bella?" She felt his hand move to her waist. It didn't feel cold this time; the blankets provided a barrier between them, but it was firm, steady, and, in some strange way, almost desperate.

She panicked for a second; had he lied when he'd once told her that her mind was a mystery to him? Could _he_ hear the screaming, the voicing of a final decision in the back of her mind, even if she wasn't sure _she_ could?

Impossible. He would _never_ lie to her.

She took a deep breath. "I think I just..." She paused, but refused to let herself think about it. She just breathed out and allowed the words to come, "...need to be alone tonight."

She felt his body weight shift, but she'd already turned her back on him again, so she couldn't tell if he was sitting up or not. "Of course", his soothing voice assured her... naturally. "Whatever you need, my love."

His hand pressed down slightly harder in that second, and she felt the overwhelming urge to take back what she'd just said, to ask him to stay, because she knew that he'd make good on his promise to love her forever, just like he always said he would. His nature, his being, his devotion to her ensured that he would never intentionally hurt her, would never leave her, would do everything in his power for the rest of both of their eternities to make sure that she never felt pain, or sadness, or fear.

She snapped back into the moment and suddenly realized that she hadn't even seen his face in what seemed like hours. She flopped back onto her back again as he stood to make his exit. She looked at him, and she loved him, and it changed nothing.

"Edward..."

He didn't respond, waiting for her to continue.

"I love you," she finally managed to whisper, and she was sure that – even without being able to read her mind – he could tell that something had changed.

Still, she couldn't imagine letting him just leave without hearing the truth for the last time.

He bent over her bedside and kissed her, this time not quite as hesitantly as usual. She didn't fight it, didn't feel the need to push him away to solidify her resolution. She accepted it as a final offering. She would remember it like this until the day she died.

He pulled away slowly, allowing his face to hover millimetres from hers. His lips parted again, as if he wished he could go back for more, as if he knew that he'd just kissed her for the last time, and was now regretting its brevity. Instead, he just whispered, his nose against hers, "Thank you..." He paused, grinning lovingly while looking down at her lips. "...for saying yes," he finished, raising his eyes to meet hers with a slight increase in his smile.

She didn't speak, because she knew there was nothing to be said in this moment that would ever make sense to them both.

* * *

_**I refuse to believe that you didn't see this coming at least a little bit. You're too clever to allow yourself to be caught completely off guard, even if you've never possessed the ability to read me like a book. I know you. Things like this just don't escape your silent attention. What confuses me is why you never mentioned anything to me about it. Was it a subconscious hope that kept you quiet all this time, or did you purposely decide to ignore the warning signs in order to maintain the status quo for as long as we could both endure it? Either way, I'm sorry. I wish you could have had the courage to break my heart, since I'm the one who deserves it. As it is, we now both have to accept that this is the way it was meant to play out.**_

* * *

She just sat there for a while, unsure how to process the seconds as they inched along and vanished one by one. If she was to believe what the voices in her head were telling her, then she'd just kissed Edward Cullen for the very last time. She felt as though she were lying to herself, or at least playing a game to see if she could trick her own brain into believing a lie. She was frozen; she had to stay completely still for a moment, because she knew that whatever came next – whatever move she made – would determine the entire course of… everything. These weren't things to be taken lightly.

Her first move was made subconsciously: a simple step out of her bed and towards the closet. She grabbed a bag from somewhere near the back and started filling it with the first clothing items she could reach. As the bag started to fill up, she realized that there was no possible way she was going to get everything to fit inside, so she stepped back, gripped the hair at her temple with her right hand, mumbled "screw it" to herself, and decided to just abandon it. And while it was all very literal at the moment, the metaphorical implications threatened to crush her as she lobbed the bulbous, brimming duffel back into the closet, deciding – rather dramatically – to travel light.

She instead threw a few modest items into her old, ratty backpack, slung it over one shoulder and darted across the room to her desk. She tapped the button on the front of her computer monitor with her knuckle, waiting impatiently for the blue-white glow to flood the small space and offer her some much-needed illumination.

She knew she couldn't take the truck; that much was obvious. If she started the engine, Charlie would hear, and this whole thing would be over before it even started.

Bella opened the browser, allowed her fingers to hover tetchily over the keys for a second before pounding out the desired words: "Taxi Forks Washington". She clicked on the first link that popped up, then frantically scanned the room to locate her cell phone. She couldn't see it anywhere, couldn't even remember when she'd last used it, and the resulting panic educed a thud that echoed inside her chest cavity like a thick rubber-band being snapped against a balloon.

She yanked all of her nightstand drawers out of their slots and, after pawing through their contents to no avail, stacked them on the floor right next to her bed and continued to ransack the place. She whipped the sheets from the mattress, shaking them out, tossing the pillows carelessly behind her, then piling everything back onto the bed haphazardly. She checked the desk, the windowsill, her bookshelf, even the closet, and still came up empty-handed.

_This can't possibly be a sign_, she thought.

She didn't even believe in signs.

She frantically spun around one last time, her dangling arms answering the tug of her upper body, slicing the air like loose propeller blades. When she stopped, she saw it… right there in front of her face. She remembered now. It was right where she'd left it on the seat of the rocking chair, right where she'd sat waiting for Edward not even an hour ago.

As she bent to pick it up, the tears just… appeared. She knew why they were there, but that still didn't mean she'd been expecting them. Soon the sobs began to intensify to the point where they were almost completely annihilating her, stealing all the breath from her lungs, forcing her to grip the chair for balance. The silent screams burned in the back of her throat, and a dull ache throbbed somewhere just behind her eyes. This lapse in concentration, this unanticipated flash flood lasted only about five minutes, but it left its intended impression all the same.

When it was over she picked up her phone, wiped off her face, and sat back down in front of the computer. The night wasn't about to stop and wait for her, and she didn't have another five minutes to waste on crying.

* * *

_**I'm not going to try and fool myself into believing that running away is the same as disappearing. I know you have the means to track me down, just like I know that, given the chance, you'd have followed me anywhere I asked. Please… I'm begging you not to try and find me.**_

* * *

The pieces of shattered glass crunched loudly against the concrete, giving her measured steps their own staticky soundtrack, an auditory reminder that she was indeed moving forward… that the time for idleness had passed. The noise was too rhythmical for her liking, though. It was unsettling, and even though she couldn't figure out _why_ she didn't like it, she nonetheless broke into a lazy jog, stopping when she found herself facing a passenger door adorned with faded black and yellow checks.

The door was locked when she first tried to open it, and the driver must have pressed the release button at the exact moment that she made her second attempt, because it still refused to budge. The third failed effort was nothing short of embarrassing.

She raised both hands up to her shoulders, palms exposed to the slightly tinted windows. At the same time, a deep, muffled voice from inside shouted, "Don't touch it for a sec!" When she finally heard the click, lifted the handle, and snuck her face into the gap, she was sure her cheeks and forehead were as red as they could possibly get.

Her nervousness silenced her for a second, and she suddenly realized that she didn't know what she was doing… or what she was supposed to say. Still, the last thing she wanted was for her ignorance to be so apparent that it would start to raise suspicions, so she forced herself to speak despite her complete lack of preparation.

"Umm… are you the taxi that I… uh… ordered?"

Her eyelids involuntarily squished together in humiliation, and she deliberately bit down on her tongue, already anticipating – and trying to head off – the words "_Wait, can I start over again?_" before they escaped her mouth.

"Nope," he answered flippantly, "I'm a human _person_." His attention was mostly focused on the open side console, fingers casually sorting through what sounded like several sheets of crumpled paper… receipts, perhaps.

She must have looked either completely stunned or completely appalled, because he immediately felt the need to elaborate, "This here's your taxi." He tapped the dashboard with his knuckle, "and this is where I was told to come, so that must make youuuuu…" He finally lifted a scrap of paper from the chaos of the console and held it out at arm's length in front of his horribly squinted eyes, moving it back and forth to try and gain some focus. "…Swan… Isabel?"

She stepped back defensively, straightened up a bit. "How do you know my—"

"Caller ID at the depot," he interrupted her question, continuing, "If you don't want people to know your name when you call them, you should probably change your privacy settings. Everyone's got caller ID these days."

She blinked, taken aback by his honesty. Since she couldn't think of a decent comeback, she turned and glanced at the road she'd been dead set on re-tracing not thirty seconds ago. Her eyes swept from the car to the street and back again, dragging her entire head along with them.

"So…" the driver said, derailing her train of thought as he turned to rest his elbow on the shoulder of the passenger seat, "yooooouuuu need a ride somewhere?" It probably wasn't meant to come out as sarcastic as it ended up sounding.

"Oh, right…" She forced herself back to present-time with a rough shake of her head, "Yeah, I guess so."

When she finally ducked inside, the second thing she noticed (the first being the overwhelming new-car scent, undoubtedly the product of a one-dollar cardboard tree) was the meter on the dash: "Forty-six dollars!?" she squeaked, unable to hide the surprise in her voice.

He cleared his throat, jerking his head slightly to the side with apparent confusion, "I thought Dave said you were willing to pay the extra fare it took me to get here."

"Yeah, I _did_ say that… but… crap," she mumbled.

"Crap is right," he sort-of-laughed with vague interest, plucking his Blackberry from its cup-holder nest and punching out few rapid keystrokes. "What's with the out-of-town cab thing, anyway? You going back to Port Angeles?"

"No," she replied, determined to leave it at that. She wasn't about to tell him that she couldn't take a cab in Forks because all of the drivers knew her father, and she _really_ didn't feel the need to mention that she actually _had_ called Forks Taxi initially, only to abruptly hang up on Marty Schultz, Charlie's longtime darts rival. She cringed a little at the recollection of her momentary lapse in judgement.

"So then… where to?" the driver finally asked after a moment's silence, settling back into his seat and draping both hands on top of the steering wheel. She decided he seemed nice enough, though possibly a little jaded from being forced to work the night shift. He'd probably jumped at the chance to take on this unusual assignment, the solitary highway drive at least promising a refreshing break from the norm. She was sure the potentially extravagant fare had likely played a deciding role as well.

She cleared her throat softly, managed to force out, "La Push."

"The _reservation_?" he gawked, his head now partially turned towards her. She could only see half of the shock on his face – one wide, slightly bloodshot eye straining to size up this odd girl sitting just outside its peripheral line.

"Yeah." She said it quickly, brushing aside his surprise like it was nothing, then decided it was necessary to tack on, "Is… that okay?"

He chuckled, shifting into drive. "You're the boss."

She nodded as they pulled out onto the main road that led towards the highway.

"Awesome."


	2. Part Two

**PART TWO**

"Do your parents know where you are?" the driver casually attempted to slip into the awkward silence.

"Excuse me!?" Her answering laughter came out sounding more like an indignant, juvenile scoff. "I'm twenty-one years old," she lied. It was _almost_ true (though her tone was obviously bitter enough to lend an air of improbability to her claim).

"Alright, alright!" He raised one hand off the wheel and held it up in mock-surrender. "No more questions, then."

A few more seconds of silence passed, and she began to get antsy. The cabdriver's assumption – that she was nothing but flighty, childish fugitive – had gotten under her skin, and she wasn't about to just sit there and allow herself to be pigeonholed.

"Can I ask _you_ something?"

He lifted his shoulders in a mild, slightly detached shrug. "Give 'er."

"Does this seem stupid to you?"

He pretended not to understand the question. "Does _what_ seem stupid to me?" he repeated almost verbatim.

She raised her hands and waved them around her own head. "This. Me… out here by myself in the middle of the night taking a ridiculously expensive taxi ride to the beach. _This_ This. Does it seem stupid? Does it seem like… I dunno… a bad idea?"

He narrowed his eyes, jerking his chin backwards until it eventually became indistinguishable from his neck. "_I'm_ supposed to know whether your ideas are good or bad?" he asked, employing the sort of ambiguous sarcasm that just came naturally to some people, and that also made him hard to read. "Last I checked I wasn't no psychologist. Or wait… psy_chiatrist_? I can never remember what the difference is. I should know, too… my sister-in-law _is_ one of them," he rambled, his tone almost _too_ relaxed. "Look, regardless, I'm not a shrink. I picked you up, you told me where go, and I'm taking you there. That's the extent of my job description. No judgment here."

She couldn't accept this, though.

"But you _did_ judge me," she said. "You thought it was weird when I asked to be taken to La Push. You said so."

He shoulder-checked unnecessarily – purely out of habit – and merged into the left-hand lane.

"I thought it was weird that someone would _want_ to pay an extra fifty bucks for a taxi to come all the way from Port Angeles when there are drivers in Forks, and then ask to be driven even _further_ west--"

"I have my reasons," she butted in, not caring whether or not he was finished.

He laughed, "I'm sure you do. Just so I'm clear, though, I'm not gonna end up on the six o'clock news or anything tomorrow, am I?"

She was stunned into silence for a moment, couldn't come up with anything more intelligent to say than, "Um… no?" It made her sound dubious, like she was throwing the question back at him. She immediately wished for a do-over.

His shoulders bobbed with noiseless laughter for a few seconds, then he cleared his throat again and said, "You haven't done this before, have you? Running away from home, or… whatever it is you're doing?"

Her head snapped up from where she'd been looking down, picking at the spot on her jeans where a hole was already threatening to wear through. "What!? What makes you think I'm… I'm not running away from home!" She tried to make it sound like she was amused by the hilarity of his assumption, but, just like when he'd caught her off guard with the age thing, her tone of voice betrayed her.

"Oh, I believe you," he chuckled, proving her point. "Millions wouldn't…" She didn't need to actually see his eyes to know they'd just followed a high arc across the car's interior.

"Look, I'm just… confused," she continued, ignoring the voice in her head that was screaming _shut up, shut up, shut up you idiot_. "I'll figure it out. That's why… I need to go to La Push. I have to talk to someone."

"Riiight…" the driver drawled. She could see the grin in his eyes; the mirror above his head allowed her get an accurate gauge on his level of his sincerity. "What is it, like a secret boyfriend or something?"

"No!" she snapped a little too aggressively.

"Oh, I'm sorry… fiancée?" he corrected himself, stretching his neck up and staring down his nose into the mirror, directing an undeniably pointed glance at the diamond on her finger. She immediately placed her right hand over the back of her left.

It occurred to her in that instant that she might want to have him change their course, to drive instead to where the streetlights yielded to the heavily-forested road that bordered the National Park. They would hang a left at the seventh mailbox, about fifteen minutes in, and follow the long, narrow driveway up towards a large, familiar house with floor-to-ceiling walls of glass and clean, geometric lines. She also wouldn't have to walk as far, because there'd be no need to worry about the engine's noise waking anyone up.

"Look. Please… I'm really tired." Her voice wavered; a few rogue tears had somehow managed to slip unnoticed past her body's internal security. The vision of the house disappeared again, and she released her own tense knuckles from her own tense grip, the stone's indentation remaining – pink and angry and sore – on her right palm.

"Okay," he relented slightly. "It's just… are you sure that--"

"You said no more questions," she cut in, "and you've already asked me like… five."

"Okay," he said. "I'm done."

* * *

_**You're probably thinking I've lost my conscience along with my mind, and really… I'd be the last person on Earth to disagree with you there. I can't allow myself to step back too far, though, because that's when the second-guessing starts, and it's that second-guessing that's kept me from doing this so much sooner. It's what keeps me in my comfort zone. It's what tells me that it's okay to ignore these little pieces of myself that haven't seen the light of day in so many years.**_

* * *

**** "You can let me out here."

"You're kidding, right?"

"No…"

"I'm not letting you out here."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not letting you wander along the side of the highway by yourself at three am."

"It's not three am, it's… quarter _to_ three..."

"Oh, well in _that_ case…"

"I'm _serious_."

"And you think I'm not?"

He was really starting to frustrate her now, and this conversation – this fruitless argument – was as much in need of some brakes as the cab itself.

"Pull over, please," she barked, the words themselves implying a certain level of politeness that didn't correspond with the tone in which they were delivered.

He drove a little bit faster, clearly prepared to take the verbal abuse if it meant getting her as close to the center of town as possible.

"Hey!" she piped up again, realizing she wasn't going to get a response, "I'm not joking. _Stop_!" She had graduated to almost shouting now, leaning forward in her seat and making it impossible for him to ignore her.

He let out an obnoxiously deliberate sigh and rolled slowly towards the edge of the pavement.

"This really isn't safe. I could get in a lot of trouble for this if anyone at the depot found out." His eyebrows in the mirror were angled up so high that they almost met near the centre of his forehead.

She started fishing inside of her bag, rustling its contents around in search of her wallet and mumbling under her breath, "Well, then it's a good thing I plan on taking this to the grave…"

"What was that?" he asked her, shifting the car into park and turning around, stretching his arms out to drape over the tops of both front seats.

She pulled out four twenties, then looked up from this task to stare him right in the eye.

"I'm not gonna tell anyone," she said, as if it couldn't be more obvious.

For reasons that they both understood but wouldn't voice, she didn't ask for any change, even though the final total only came to $68.80. _Only_.

When he eventually drove away, he stuck to a slow crawl for the first fifty yards or so, then gradually picked up speed until the red glow of the taillights had no choice but to completely disappear behind the trees.

She hoisted her bag up onto her shoulders and marched – completely unafraid for the first time tonight – into the reassuring darkness.

* * *

__

_**You'd absolutely hate it where I'm going, anyway… I think I understand you well enough by now to know that there are few places in this world that fit you like Forks does. Would you have sacrificed your life here in order to follow me? See, the answer is (to me, at least) pretty obvious. Maybe it isn't to you. But that's beside the point, because the question is irrelevant. I'd never ask you to come with me. I'd never forgive myself for tearing you away from your home.**_

* * *

****

Jacob's window was only open a crack, and with the whole house situated up on its crawlspace, she could barely touch the sill with her fingertips when she stood on her toes.

_That's okay_, she thought to herself, _I don't have to be able to reach_.

She turned around and jogged over to the edge of the driveway, stooping to scrape up a handful of gravel, which she shook around in her loosely-cupped fingers to sift out the sand as she walked slowly back towards the house.

Positioning herself a few feet back from the wall, she plucked a couple of rocks from the centre of her left palm and held them up in front of her face as if aiming them at an eye-level dartboard rather than a high window. She hoped that this would work, knew that it _at least_ had the potential to; _she_ had been roused in this manner before. So, taking her cue from Jacob himself, she straightened her arm and, with a graceless little hop, lobbed the stones up towards the glass.

Both rocks sailed straight through the three-inch opening.

For a moment she could only gawk at this development, her jaw simply dangling in mid-air, one eyebrow arched to the high heavens. After a few quick beats, however, she released an epic snort of laughter, bringing her hands up to her mouth to muffle the mad cackling that followed.

She couldn't believe it. If, at this very moment, someone pulled into Jacob's driveway with an honest-to-goodness time machine and offered to pay her a billion dollars to redo what she'd just done, those two rocks would be in the rain-gutter for sure. She made a quick mental note to re-enact this impressive feat for Jake later, since he enjoyed hearing about her little fluky moments almost as much as he loved ridiculing her for her lack of coordination.

She brought her hands down to rest on her thighs, propping up her contorted torso as she tried to reign in her giddiness. Suddenly, a noise not unlike a footstep made her spine straighten and her chin perk up. She ventured a hasty guess…

"Jake?"

Her eyes darted back and forth expectantly. She waited for him to come to the window... ten, twenty, thirty seconds... but nothing happened. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the remainder of the rocks, releasing them with a gentle underhand toss. This time they all hit the glass with a loud clatter and rebounded onto the lawn.

"JAKE!" she repeated, a little louder this time.

She waited again... and once again: Nothing.

Frustrated, she tightened the straps on her backpack, securing it flush against the curve of her spine.

After yet another brief jog, this time to the patch of long grass near the edge of the trees that Jacob didn't bother to cut anymore because _'Billy can't see behind the garage, anyway,"_ she returned with a rather sturdy-looking twig. Perfect.

Reaching up, she carefully threaded the branch through the opening in the window and slowly but patiently levered it open enough to facilitate the second phase of her plan. It took her a few good low-squatted jumps to get a decent grip on the windowsill, but once her fingers found purchase on the ledge, she was able to scramble her sneakers far enough up the siding to hook one calf over the sill next to her hands.

After eventually inching her entire leg over the threshold with a few well-planned spurts of momentum, the whole thing got a lot easier, even if it wasn't much more elegantly executed. Her knee preceded her hips, which were followed by her shoulders, and then her other knee. Soon she found herself crouched triumphantly in an awkward sort of one-legged squat on the windowsill. She was pretty certain that if anyone were awake to witness this lame attempt at stealth, they'd be in hysterics.

She stretched one hand out uncomfortably, desperately searching for something to support her weight against. Jacob's dresser was conveniently located right next to the window, so its top drawer provided the perfect handle on which her fingers could achieve a reassuring hold.

She remained in this position for a few seconds, regaining her breath and feeling the veins in her legs slowly begin to tingle, before making her next move.

When she tried to get both feet over the edge, however, everything fell apart. One of her ankles remained stuck on the windowsill as she turned her body around to lower herself to the ground. In the end, she had to tilt herself at a precarious diagonal to dislodge her foot, which sent her tumbling across the floor rather noisily, taking the entire dresser drawer with her. It smashed against the wooden floor with a *_bang_*, its contents scattering across the room.

"_Ow…_" she whispered, drawing in several hissing breaths between clenched teeth, trying desperately to get her bearings. "_Owowowowow…_"

She sat up, and spun around with a slight jolt as a low voice called out from somewhere on the other side of the bedroom door: "_Jacob?_"

"_SHIT!_" she hissed rather uncharacteristically, "_SHITSHITSHIT…_" She frantically attempted to tidy the mess she'd made, raking her arms across the bedroom floor, trying to gather up as much of the strewn clothing as she could.

"_JACOB? What's going on in there?_" Billy's voice was louder now, more serious. "_Are you okay?_"

Bella stood up in a panic, her arms overflowing with…

She looked down:

Boxer briefs.

She let out a small yelp, whipping her hands back down to her sides and standing, rigid as a soldier, allowing the offending items to redistribute themselves at her feet. Her head darted frantically from side to side, and she bit down hard on her lower lip. She kept her eyes glued to the door as she approached the huge, sheet-covered lump on the bed, which was expanding and contracting softly, emitting a muted, peaceful buzz.

Immediately opting against the standard cheery '_rise and shine!_' she pounded violently on his upper arm with the softest parts of her balled-up hands, whispering between clenched teeth, "JAKE! WAKE UP!"

"Unngghrr?" the blob moaned, shifting until it was no longer just a lump, but a face with a neck and a set of shoulders… and a long arm that emerged sleepily from beneath the sheet to effortlessly quell her fists of fury with a single swipe.

"JAKE! Billy's asking for you… Wake _UP_!" she was almost growling now. If Billy found out she was here, then Charlie would find out too… and then it would all be over.

Jacob's eyes cracked open slightly. The dark black pupil was only barely visible thanks to the bluish glint of the moonlight against his eyeball. His eyebrows drew together, and his head retreated further back into the pillow as if he were trying achieve better focus by lengthening the distance between them, even if only by half an inch. After about three seconds of silence, both of his hands floated up towards his face, their heels gradually digging into his eye sockets. "Bella..." he breathed out almost incoherently, "wuhyoudoinere?"

She grabbed his shoulder again, kneading it like a lump of dough and eyeing the door again with concern.

"Jake, I just… I think…" she paused to listen carefully for any sign of movement outside the door, but could only hear two sets of lungs operating at different speeds. "It doesn't _matter_ why I'm here right now, I think your dad heard me! You've gotta get up!" she spat at him, grabbing his wrist and yanking one hand away from his face. She leaned back and pulled his arm towards the door using the weight of her entire body.

"Okay, okay, jeez…" He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and running his fingers lazily back and forth over his only-just-recently-shorn head. When he eventually lumbered to his feet, slightly unstable at first, she noticed for the first time that he was barely clothed – even more so than usual, or rather… _less_ so than usual.

She blushed and looked away, back at the destruction she'd caused.

He opened the door, made to step outside, and a floorboard creaked under his carelessly heavy footsteps, causing Billy to pipe up once more, "_Jacob? Are you sleepwalking or something_?" There was a brief pause, then a barely-discernable, "_Goddamn it. Not again._"

"No…" Jake started to speak, but she cut him off with a violent tug on his hand.

"_DON'T TELL HIM I'M HERE_," she mouthed exaggeratedly without any sound, shaking her head from side to side and slashing her free hand across her neck in fierce horizontal strokes.

He roughly freed his fingers from hers and waved his entire arm dismissively in her direction without so much as a backward glance, trudging out into the hallway and shutting the door behind him… right in her face.

She pressed her ear up against the wood, trying to make out what he was saying, but only catching certain words.

"What?"… "Nothing"… "Fell"… "Sorry"… "Careful"… "G'night"…

His return was so silent that she only noticed he was back when the door handle started to jiggle. Before she had a chance to make it look like she _hadn't_ just been eavesdropping on him, he nudged the door open a little too swiftly, sending it clunking against her hip, shoulder, and forehead in succession: _*buh-buh-bump*_.

"Aaach…" she gasped, stumbling backwards into his closet door, which consequently slammed shut against its frame.

"SHHHH!" he hissed out through gritted teeth. He once again passed a hand repeatedly over the top of his head, eventually palming his entire skull like a basketball and rolling it around on his neck to observe the ceiling briefly, not even trying to hide his frustration.

Tiptoeing, she centred herself in the room, as far away from any one object as she could get.

They stared at each other for a moment before he finally took some initiative, widening his eyes and rotating both loosely-fanned-out hands on their respective wrists, entreating her reply in complete silence.

She responded in kind, arching her own brows and lifting her shoulders up in a clearly defiant _What!?_

"Umm…" he drew the sound out, pressing his lips together tightly before separating them with a slight pop. "What the _hell!?_" He kept his voice low.

She took a second, swivelling her head around to observe the chaos. If she was being honest, it didn't _really_ look that much worse than the usual state of his room, but still… it was noticeable. When she snuck her head back around to face him, he was still waiting for her answer.

But no words came. She only wished she had the guts to go ahead and play their usual game, to shoot him a wry response that was sure to provoke an equally snarky counterattack, but nothing came to her. All she had was honesty, and she silently cursed her absent imagination.

"I just…" she started, allowing her chin to dip until all she could see was the collage of rumpled clothing at their feet. "I needed to see you." Reaching up, she clamped one hand onto the back of her own neck, rubbing gently at the spot where the friction from her bag's strap had burnt an angry red line onto the delicate skin.

"So… you decided to run night-ops? Nice." The chill in his voice was _more_ than apparent as he reached around her to grab the window by its frame and slide it back to almost-shut. He turned and bent at the waist, scooping the entire scattered contents of his underwear drawer up between both large hands and depositing it all back in its proper place. "I've gotta say, though, your B&E could use a little work."

Suddenly, her head snapped up. She took a threatening step forward, raising her index finger like a weapon. "I wouldn't _have_ to break into your house if you had the decency to answer my phone calls, or even just… write me a freakin' note or something," she spat at him. "Where the hell have you _been_, Jacob? You tell me to come by and then you disappear for _four days_?"

"Oh, _I'm sorry_," he drawled in an almost eerily calm monotone. "What's wrong with the truck this time, then?"

"You-" she began before suddenly jerking her head back, changing her course mid-accusation, "wait, _what_?"

"The truck. What is it this time? Spark plugs?" She could see him struggling to find his words, "Flat tire? Chipped window? Wiper blades need replacing?"

She played dumb, "Why would you assume--"

"Because I get it now, Bella. It's cool." Judging from the tone of his voice and the disturbingly inappropriate smile on his face, it was pretty obvious that, whatever _'it'_ was, it most definitely _wasn't_ cool. He continued to explain himself, "You come to me when something needs fixing, and then you skip off on your merry little way." He flung his hand out to the side. "So… spit it out. What's wrong with the truck?"

She was now glaring at him with absolute rage, arms locked together over her chest, lip so close to quivering that she had to hold back her words for a moment while she attempted a few measured breaths through flared nostrils. She finally forced her mouth open, mumbled, "The truck's not even here, you big jerk."

His eyes narrowed, but not menacingly; he looked genuinely confused. "How did you get here, then?" he questioned, forgetting about his – and her – anger for a second, knowing that she couldn't have used her motorcycle, because it was out in the garage under a sheet of heavy canvas.

"I took a cab," she stated matter-of-factly.

"You took a _cab_?" he repeated with more than just a tinge of incredulity.

"I took a cab." Her eyes dared him to ask her why.

But instead he turned his back to her, exhaling deeply, his aggravation _more_ than apparent. He took two steps back towards the door and whipped a pair of shorts off the ground, pulling them swiftly on. He gripped the doorknob tightly, almost furiously, turning it clockwise about an inch before she interrupted him:

"Where are you going now?"

"You're coming with me," he said, turning his head to glance at her out of the corner of his eye. "I'm driving you home."

"No," she asserted, dumbstruck, backing up until she was pressed tightly into the corner between the wall and the dresser. She wrapped both hands pathetically around one of his flimsy drapes, clutching it to her chest as if his entire bedroom was some sort of beloved doll. "I'm not going back home."

His eyes grazed the ceiling for a millisecond, and he let out a blatantly derisive sigh. When he realized this wasn't going to be enough to dislodge her, he once again flapped his hand indifferently in her general direction and muttered, "Well then I'm going back to bed."

She wasn't sure if he realized that she meant she was _never_ going home, but it suddenly didn't matter to her what he thought. His aloofness had finally worn her patience down to a thin, tenuous wire.

She produced a tiny, high-pitched sound that might've resembled a laugh had it contained even an ounce of amusement. Her hands released the drapes. "What's your problem, anyway?" she barked at him, forgetting for a second to keep her voice down.

His expression immediately changed, and he snarled in a low baritone, "I'm _angry_ at you. Is that against some sort of grand cosmic law or something? I'm not allowed to be angry at you for _using_ me?"

"I wasn't using-"

"Bull. Shit. That's total bullshit and you know it!"

"Jake..."

"No, don't 'Jake' me. You think it's that easy, don't you? Flash me the look and I'll just forget anything ever happened, huh?"

"Stop yelling at me."

"I'm _whispering_!"

"Whatever! Stop being so irrational."

He balked at this. "No! You get pissy with me all the time and I don't tell _you_ to stop being irrational!" He raised his voice up ridiculously high and proceeded to mimic her: "_Jake, stop eating all my chocolate chips. Jake, change the channel. Jake, put some shoes on. Jake, stop hating the bloodsucker._" He rolled his eyes dramatically at her. "Well, screw you, Bella. I can be as angry as I want to be. And just so you're clear, for the past few days I've been pretty damned angry."

She blinked a few wide blinks. It appeared as though she'd just had the wind beat out of her with a crowbar. "_Screw you_!?" she repeated, her eyes beginning to blur.

A slightly guilty look flared up in his eyes for a second, like he sort of wished he could go back in time a few minutes and make some slight adjustments to his little diatribe, but that guilt still wasn't enough to overshadow the pain. Even an unbiased onlooker would've _easily_ been able to tell that he was hurting, and not just a little bit.

He ducked his head and stepped back over to the mattress, sitting down heavily.

A sudden, strange look of discomfort passed over his face, and he shifted himself a few inches to the side, reaching down and plucking a small piece of rock from underneath his leg. He stared down at it, thoroughly perplexed, pinching it between his fingertips, rotating his hand to consider it from all angles.

Bella tried her hardest to stifle an inappropriate giggle. It felt so weird layered on top of her anger and tears.

Jacob ultimately lost interest and tossed the stone onto the floor. He then stretched out on the bed and rolled over, putting her right back in the position she'd occupied upon her arrival: in the centre of his room, surrounded by his mess, staring at his back.

She remained still for a moment before finally sighing and walking over to the bed. She repeated her last declaration, "I'm not going home."

He was completely silent.

"So, what? You're just going to ignore me, then?"

He didn't respond, didn't move.

"Jake?"

Nothing.

She sighed and rolled her eyes at his childishness, but it didn't take long for her to start to feel cold... alone... and really, really stupid.

Without hesitation, she planted both hands on his side and swung one leg over him, then the other, landing with a graceless plop on the bed between him and the wall. The whole thing squeaked and bounced under her added weight. She sat there cross-legged with her back against the wall for a few moments, staring at him, marvelling at his unflinching stillness. Only when she grasped the true depth of his stubbornness did she allow herself to stretch out next to him, not _right_ next to him, but a good foot and a half away.

She was facing him, staring him right in the eye... lids. His breathing was not steady enough to come from a deeply unconscious place. He was still awake... obviously, but he just didn't want to talk to her. Again: Obviously.

It was time for her to make some real decisions. She had to at least _try_ to convince him, and if she couldn't... then she had to believe she was ready to turn her back on literally _everything_.

* * *

_**We both have so much life left to live, and I just can't go on believing that this is my forever. I look at the idea of forever here with you and I just can't see it working, no matter how much I wish it were enough. We're such different people, you and I. We want different things in life. You know I never wanted marriage, that I was happy to just be with you. I still can't get over the fact that I feel so young, so out-of-place with this ring on my hand, and I can't help but feel like I was never really ready for this to happen. It's important to you, though, I appreciate that… but it's just one of many things that make me realize how different we really are.**_

* * *

****

"Jake?" she whispered into the empty space between them.

He didn't so much as twitch. His breathing remained steady and heavy.

She reached out a hand and poked him in the arm. "Jake!" This time it was a demand rather than a question.

As before, the lines of his features remained abnormally frozen, as if they were formed out of wax.

"I'm leaving Forks," she whispered to his unresponsive face. "I'm serious." For a split second she regretted tacking on this silly addendum, realizing that it only served to make everything seem _less_ serious.

Nonetheless, she continued to allow the words to leak out of her like so many breaths of air, because… it was _Jacob_; she'd always been able to lay herself bare with him, to tell him absolutely everything, even the things she might not have the courage to say to anyone else. And she knew he was always listening, even when he was trying to make it seem like he wasn't.

"I never… thought about… what it would be like to just…" Her inability to find the right words halted her mid-sentence. She let out the remainder of the deep breath that had served as the platform for her attempted declaration, its long, sonorous exhale having carried the words as far as they could be taken.

Her course changed in a heartbeat, "I feel like everything I have here, everything I've come to base my entire life around is a lie." She paused, bringing one set of fingers up to her forehead, stroking outwards, smoothing the lines. "I've been lying to myself."

She noticed his eyes just barely twitching beneath their lids, yet still they refused to open.

"What did he do?" His mouth appeared to be moving independently of the rest of his body.

"He didn't do anything…" she answered with a single low, bitter grunt, knowing that this was the truth, that she was villain in this entire messed-up scenario. She was the one who deserved to be chastised, and she was prepared to argue until her last breath, even with Jacob, to preserve the good image that Edward deserved.

"Oh really…" Jacob's deadpan voice was still mostly a whisper, but it was loud enough for her to pick out the abundant sarcasm it contained. "He didn't do _anything_?" One of his eyes cracked open, and his hand emerged from under the sheets to find her left wrist. He raised it gently with one extended index finger before letting it drop lifelessly back onto the mattress.

She felt her stomach plunge, and, for the second time that night, she concealed the ring beneath the palm of her opposite hand.

"It means nothing." She pushed her head up an inch or so on the pillow so that she could look directly into his tiny sliver of exposed pupil. "I don't want it. I don't want anything that it represents."

His mouth, again, was the only thing that moved. "And yet you're still wearing it."

She frowned at the implied simplicity of it all. "What do you want me to do, sprint out to the cliffs screaming my foolish head off and, like… heave it dramatically into the sea? Some overblown symbolic gesture? Does that sound _at all_ like me to you?"

The edges of his lips twitched upwards the tiniest bit, and if she hadn't been staring at his face so intently, she wouldn't even have noticed.

"I'm not gonna keep it," she muttered down at her hand, twirling the ring around and around on her finger. "I just… don't know what to do with it right now."

"But you're wearing it, so that means…" He opened his eyes and tried desperately to look anywhere except at her face, but the only other object in his line of sight was the blank wall behind her head, so he was forced to reluctantly return her gaze. "That means you said yes," he stated resolutely, knowing that there was no point in phrasing it as a question.

She searched for a justification, but instead allowed the lamest phrase that had ever passed her lips to sneak out: "I didn't know what else to say."

He laughed at this, a rough sound almost like a cough that came from the back of his throat. "How 'bout _no_." He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, rolling onto his back and folding both hands together to rest on his torso.

"Yeah, that probably would've been smarter…" she trailed off under her breath, a sweet sadness coming through in her tone.

"It _definitely_ would have been smarter," he grumbled, his eyes now closed again.

"Oh, like all of _your_ decisions are so freaking intelligent," she piped up, reaching out to shove his shoulder with her fingertips.

He smiled the tiniest smile, and she could tell he was remembering something, possibly one of their many fights, one of the many times they'd succeeded in hurting each other with any number of horrible choices, one of their _moments_: Jacob and Bella and their veritable mountain of reciprocal stupidity.

Then suddenly his mouth flat-lined, and his expression hardened so fast that she almost forgot she'd seen him smile at all.

"Stop it," he growled.

"Stop what?"

"Stop… trying to make me forget I'm pissed off."

She sighed, crestfallen. It seemed there was nothing else to say. Nonetheless, she decided to give one last desperate try.

"Fine," she whispered. "I won't say anything else until morning, and then I'll leave." She paused, waiting to see if he had anything to offer, then, when it became clear that he didn't, continued, "I really wish you'd come with me, but I know I can't make you."

Shuffling closer to him on the mattress, but still not _too_ close, she directed her next breath right at his ear, because if there was ever one thing she wanted him to know was coming straight from her heart, this was it.

"You…" her bottom lip passed between her teeth for a moment of brief hesitation. She didn't know how to say things like this… honest, vulnerable things that stripped away all pretenses and left her feeling brutally exposed. Still, she couldn't just give him the first word and not finish. She inhaled the deepest of breaths and resumed her course, "You'll be the hardest thing to leave behind."

And with that, she reached up and gently disentangled the fingers of his right hand from those of his left. His entire body stiffened for a second, but she held fast, pulling his arm down to his side and curling all of her pasty little fingers around his thumb, their palms pressed flat against each other. She placed her other hand on the back of his, running her own thumb over his strained knuckles and begging, "Please. Just until the morning. Last time, I promise."

And when his hand softened against hers, it was impossible to tell exactly what he was accepting: her offer, or the long-awaited proclamation of his final release.

* * *

_**There's a certain calm that comes with letting things go. Yes, there's also sadness, and confusion, and possibly even regret, but those things will hopefully pass. It's been so long since I've felt this certain about anything, and I know it's because there is something better – maybe even something perfect – for me out there… somewhere. I am going to find it. If I didn't believe this with all my heart, then I'd never, not even for one second, dream of hurting you.**_

* * *

****

The motorcycle was buried somewhere beneath a huge tarp, and she was struggling to free it without inadvertently knocking it over or something. The last thing she wanted was to have to sheepishly slink back into his room and ask him to right the goddamned bike for her.

He hadn't said a word when she'd finally released his hand and raised herself into a sitting position on his creaky mattress. He could've just been asleep, but still… she didn't want to resume a conversation that he obviously wasn't interested in having. She'd said all that needed to be said, and he'd clearly held his ground. The time had come to let go.

Still, the tears were now spilling out, tapping one-by-one onto the heavy canvas she was wrestling with.

She knew she would have to push the bike a ways, far enough from the house that the thunderous ripping and snarling of its engine firing up wouldn't stir Billy from his sleep for a second time that night. She hoped she would remember how to ride it, hoped that her limbs would cease their shaking when she finally climbed onto the seat.

She flipped the last corner of the tarp off the handlebars, sniffling pathetically at the same time, and nearly jumped out of her skin when a voice appeared behind her in the rapidly dissolving darkness.

"You think it's that easy for me to just trust you?" His voice wavered with a mixture of fatigue and emotion. She turned around and easily found him - silhouetted against the distant glow of the streetlamp at the end of his driveway, framed almost dead-center within the borders of the garage's cavernous mouth.

She couldn't quite decide how to respond, so she said the most honest thing she could think of.

"I don't know what else to say."

"So then _listen_. You know how long I've waited to hear you say those things you just said in there?" He pointed towards the bedroom with one hand, gripped his neck with the other, the latent anxiety revealing itself in the tense bulge of his upper arm. "A long freaking time, Bella. So long, in fact, that just this week I'd managed to _finally_ convince myself that it's _never going to happen_. And… now this? I'm… it's just… it's hard to take it seriously, y'know?"

"I know," she reluctantly agreed, taking a step forward and then stopping as he barrelled on.

"I can't do this anymore, Bells. I can't keep torturing myself like this. It's exhausting." His hand dropped back to his side, and she waited, breath held inside her lungs, to see if he was finished.

He was.

"So then why come out here?" She sniffed, her composure almost completely re-established now, her sadness replaced with indignation. "Why ignore me for three hours, let me get up and leave, and then come running out here _now_ with your excuses?"

"Because," he slurred softly, his vocal chords finally catching on to how tired his brain was, "I'm not making excuses. I'm just telling you… how this is going to work. If I come with you, there's to be no more indecisiveness. I won't have you driving off and leaving me on the side of the road again."

"Jake, I'm not--"

"Just…" He shut his eyes and brought one hand up to rub his temple, clearly not in the mood for any type of discussion. "Don't argue. Just promise me you won't--"

"I won't."

"Okay, then. Let's go."

* * *

_**I used to think that I was far too dependent on you, that my whole world would collapse if you decided to leave me. But I've thought about it a lot, considered every scenario, and I've come to see that I was being stupid, because you would never leave me. It's that simple. I just can't picture you walking away. It's like trying to imagine a goldfish jumping voluntarily from its bowl. Sometimes I feel like I can see you on your own, and I know that you are strong, and you forgive me, and you're okay without me, but other times I wonder if my rash decisions will only serve to destroy you. I can't bear the thought of you struggling to live on your own, and yet, even more than that, I can't bear the thought of living one more day on this side of the glass**_

* * *

****

He was taking too long.

Bella checked the time on her phone, then glanced at the side-view mirror, hoping to catch sight of him jogging across the lawn towards the Rabbit where she sat waiting impatiently. He was still inside the house, though; all she could see was the sky behind her – to the east – temporarily static in its transition from deep indigo to mauve, the overlying treetops like cut-outs in a shadow box. It made her nervous, this encroaching daylight. For the first time in however many months she didn't have even the _slightest_ idea what was going to happen when the sun came up, and this filled her with an energy that was sort of like fear, though not entirely. There was something else too-

The driver's door abruptly popped open, making her jump for the second time in the past twenty minutes. Jacob quickly ducked inside, rubbing his hands together for whatever reason, perhaps momentarily forgetting that it was impossible for them to be cold.

She didn't look him in the eye, simply held her bag on her lap and blurted out, "You told him, didn't you?"

"Wha?" he responded absently, still trying to convince himself – and her – that his hands needed warming up.

"I'm not stupid, Jake. I know why you took so long. You told him, didn't you?"

"He doesn't care, Bells. He's cool with it."

"Yes, Jacob, but _Charlie_ will care."

He took a second to absorb these words, then shrugged and turned to face her.

"Then I guess you're just going to have to explain yourself to Charlie in the next few days." His expression was calm, certain. "You're a legal adult, Bells. All he can do is yell at you. By the time we come back he'll have had plenty of time to simmer down."

She didn't say anything in response, simply stared at him with a combination of confusion and annoyance.

"What?" he finally asked, squirming under her scrutiny.

"You don't get it, Jake. This is _it_ for me. I don't _want_ to come back. "

His lips pressed firmly together to form a straight horizontal line, then finally opened to allow him to push a string of incoherent words out through his teeth.

Her head tilted to the side in puzzlement; it made her look like a startled owl. "_What_? I can't pack for little-league?"

"You. Came. Back. From. I-ta-ly." He over-enunciated each repeated word as if he were attempting to teach _Green Eggs and Ham_ to a five-year-old.

She turned to face him, curling her left leg underneath her to achieve a better viewing angle. "Yes, but I wasn't running _away_ then," she explained.

"No, you were running _towards_ him, weren't you?" Jacob's tone wasn't really angry or bitter like it had been in his bedroom, but quiet… contemplative… as if, in simply voicing his jumbled thoughts, he hoped to eventually obtain some clarity.

"What is this even about?" she asked, sick and tired of dancing around the subject, wanting to get a move-on. "Why are we talking about Italy?"

"Because," he started, and she could tell he was weighing his words carefully, "_we_ don't do this, you and me..." He began to distractedly pull on an elastic band that was looped over the Rabbit's gearshift, snapping it in a slow, steady rhythm. "Every time you take off somewhere… it always has something to do with _him_."

"That's not true."

"Bells, don't--"

"I asked you once, a long time ago," she interjected. Her voice was reduced to an almost-whisper, and she tried to sneak her head around to find his eyes, which were diverted on purpose, trained on the centre of the steering wheel, or maybe the speedometer. "Hey," she quietly spoke, waiting for him to reluctantly drag his eyes over to meet hers, "I asked you to run away with me once and it had _nothing_ to do with him."

He already had his answer ready: "And I asked _you_ to come with _me_ four days ago, and you said _no_."

She wanted so badly to tell him _why_ she'd said no: Because she hadn't realized at the time that Edward wasn't – as she'd always believed – her _only_ choice, that he was merely the _easiest_ choice. She wanted to look Jacob in the eye and tell him the truth, or the closest thing to the truth that she could articulate…

_You're not a constant, Jake. You're not a guarantee, and I love you, and it scares me so much, and--_

_*Snap… snap… snap…*_

Bella reached down and stilled his hand, holding it gently between both of her own. He squeezed her fingers a little, and she looked down, immediately noticing that the elastic he'd been playing with was one of hers – one of the cute, glittery hair bands that Renee had sent her for Christmas last year.

And before she even had a chance to think, she scooted so enthusiastically towards him that she ended up almost sitting on the gearshift. Her hands climbed up his arm one over the other… over the other… over the other… until she'd successfully pulled his entire upper body down to her level.

The meeting of their lips was like a car crash, swift, and painful, and out-of-the-blue. There were no hands on faces, no gentle touches or softly moving mouths, just pure force, pressure, desperation.

When it was over, the fireworks were quick to fizzle, and she immediately collapsed in upon herself, mumbling a horrified "Oh, God" into her hands. "Oh God… _Shit_."

"BELLS!" he exclaimed with amused disbelief, partially because of the kiss, partially from hearing the dreaded S-word fall from her lips.

She ignored his exaggerated reaction, instead continued to mumble, "Oh God, Oh God, I'm such an idiot. What the hell did I do?"

He scratched the back of his neck, blinking, stunned. "Uh… you _kissed_ me?"

Her hand shot out to the side, smacking him hard on the arm. "Shut up!" she moaned, fighting to swallow the lump in her throat.

He gave a laugh that shook the whole car along with his shoulders. "Wow…thanks…" he chuckled. "Really. I can feel the love, Bells…"

She moaned, her face pressed into her fingers again as he continued to laugh silently.

"I didn't mean to… I mean… that wasn't… I'm not even…" she stumbled over her words like a unfortunate slasher-movie victim barrelling through a dark forest – one that was completely overrun with convenient roots and stumps. She finally gathered her wits enough to make a complete sentence: "I hadn't planned for that to happen."

His grin widened to the point of ridiculousness, "Uh… _yeah_! That's what made it _AWEsome_…"

A single, pathetic little laugh managed to surface from somewhere deep in her lungs, and before she knew it, she was smiling too. She shoved his shoulder playfully with the heel of her hand, right where she'd only just recently tried to bruise him, then tilted her head back until she was staring at the ceiling. Her voice came out sounding strained, her neck bent at its most awkward of angles, "Jake, I have no idea what the hell's going on in my brain these days. I just—"

But he cut her off with an over-exaggerated scoff, then, with the most genuine, uninhibited smile, said, "Oh, _please_. Like all of your decisions are so freaking intelligent."

* * *

_**Do you remember that night in Astoria when we drank that whole box of wine and decided we needed to find a way down to the foot of the old bridge? It's a wonder we didn't fall in and drown. It was the Fourth of July, remember? And the boats were drifting in and we sat on the stones and played with the passing lights, making animal shapes with our hands against the retaining wall. Do you remember the story I told you about the shadows in the cave? You laughed and said you thought it sounded pretentious, and I refused to look at you after that… until you almost broke your foot trying to follow me, stumbling over the rocks. I was angry because you wouldn't even try to open your mind. You didn't want to believe that there might be something better out there for us, and I was too stupid to realize that maybe you didn't want things to change. But I get it now. We weren't meant to want the same things, and I can't go on pretending to be satisfied with shadows on a wall.**_

* * *

****

He didn't expect her to speak because her eyes were closed and she'd been completely still for the past half hour or more, so when she did, he flinched.

"I've been here before."

"Huh?"

"This is the same road she drove. I've been here before." She shifted in her seat, bent her left knee up again so that she was sitting on her ankle, facing slightly towards him. "Though, I don't remember it."

"Who are you talking about?" He asked, eyes still on the road.

"My mother."

This revelation was followed by a heavy silence, one that neither of them could quite figure out how to fill.

Bella turned and stared out the window, pressing her temple against the glass as the world sped by and thinking: _This is the same road, and these are the same trees, and that is the same exit sign, and this is the same feeling – this freedom, this apprehension._

"I don't even know if she ever realized," she finally spoke, though not to anyone or anything in particular, "how much she hurt him."

He suddenly caught on to what the comparison implied. "You're his _daughter_, Bells. You were going to leave him sooner or later. It's not the same thing at all. He knows that."

"I'm not talking about Charlie, Jake," she retorted, keeping her eyes focused on the side of his head. He refused to move, refused to verbally acknowledge that yes, he knew damned well who she was talking about, and no, he wasn't eager to have this conversation at this point in the trip.

"You're not your mother, Bella," he tried not to sound like he was grumbling, kept his eyes glued to the road. "Every decision you make is _yours_."

Her fingers floated across the empty space to land right on top of his, right on the wheel, and she held them there, strong and sure. Settling back into her seat, she seemed to have to strain her arm to keep it outstretched, but she refused to let go; she needed him to know that she was in this with him, that they were doing this together, that this was _them_ moving forward, not him helping her escape.

"I know," she agreed, tightening her fingers even more, "and I never said it was a bad thing."

He subtly glanced down, trying not to move his head, and – in a moment that would make his lips press together in a secret smile, and his heartbeat rise to the back of his throat, rattling against those three simple yet cliché words that would continue to go unsaid until maybe after they passed the state line, or maybe even later – visually confirmed what he thought he'd noticed three seconds ago when her hand had first breached the gap between them.

The ring was gone.

He didn't dare ask where it went.

And they sat like this for while… in the stillness that existed only between them, straining their eyes against the blinding dawn, and she felt the fear of uncertainty that accompanied the sunrise, and she embraced it.

And they drove – past the trees, and past the exit signs, and past the houses where the people were stirring from their sleep and whispering to each other in the half-light that it was time to get up and make something of the day.

* * *

_**I'm not asking for your permission, that much is probably obvious by now, but I'm begging you again to at least try to forgive me. It hurts me like you wouldn't believe, knowing that I'm forcing you to give up this life you've helped build for us, this life that means so much to you, but I'll never lose hope that some day you'll be happier than you ever could've been with my apathy on your conscience. You deserve to be happy, and I need to believe that you will be… because I love you, Charlie. I love you, and I don't want to do this to you, and that's the one thing that makes me want to tear this up and go back to bed and never even think about leaving you ever again. Maybe I shouldn't have said that… I'm sorry. You know me; I've never been very good at these things.**_

Please just know that I'm going to be okay. I know that's probably not enough, but it's all I can offer.

I'm sorry.

I love you.

Renee

* * *

So there you have it! Special thanks goes out again to blueandblack for being such an amazing support, and a fantastic artist to boot! Also, I gotta thank chosenfire at the bellaxjacob_bb community for putting this whole thing together! Yay! It's finished! I'm gonna go have a bottle of wine now.... :)


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